Ah, the tie game. Spring Training baseball at its purest!
In Clearwater on Saturday afternoon, the Philadelphia Phillies and Detroit Tigers played an ultimately meaningless baseball game. According to Noam Chomsky, all sports are a distraction from the real things on which we need to focus our attention.
While I greatly admire the work of Dr. Chomsky, he must not be terribly fun at parties. Live a little, Noam! Go to a ballgame, have a beverage, enjoy the sunshine, and watch the Tigers and Phillies achieve the most mediocre result in sports, a 2-2 tie.
But, oooh, the details! Let’s dive in.
Tarik Skubal, our beloved Cy Young winner, made his fourth spring start. He’s looked good so far, strikin’ ‘em out and all of that. He’s your Opening Day starter — but, as he opined last year, what he’d really like to do is start Game 1 of the playoffs… which he certainly did. My goodness, what a magical season it was for him and the Tigers (and, indeed, all of us).
Starting today for the Phillies was Zack Wheeler, who had a sensational 2024. He finished second in NL Cy Young voting for the second time, and while his 2021 season (his other second-place Cy season) was arguably better, he was no slouch last season either. His WHIP was under 1, he struck out over a batter an inning, and while being a slightly-flyball-heavy pitcher, he doesn’t give up an exorbitant number of home runs.
Both starting pitchers have been named the opening-day starters for their respective teams. What a matchup!
The Tigers got on the board early: with one out, Riley Greene reached on an error, took third on a Kerry Carpenter double, and both the aforementioned guys came home on an opposite-field Colt Keith double to make it 2-0.
That was only Keith’s second extra-base hit of the spring. Should we be concerned? (Remember, he’s also learning a new position in the field this spring too.)
Skubal looked good early, striking out three in the first and hitting 98 mph, allowing a single to Bryce Harper who, I’m told, is quite a good hitter. He was facing a lineup that contained a lot of regular players, which also featured a lot of left-handed hitters, which was to Skubal’s advantage… except that lefties tallied all but one of the hits off him all day. That’s why you play the games, kiddo.
Three singles in the third by Brandon Marsh, Trea Turner and that Harper guy produced the first Philadelphia run, narrowing the gap to 2-1. But Skubal clearly had enough of those hijinks, as in the next inning he put down the Phils 1-2-3, getting Nick Castellanos to look at a triple-digit third strike to end the frame.
Wheeler ended up going five innings, giving up a pair of runs and a trio of hits, striking out three and walking one. He threw 49 of his 75 pitches (65.3%) for strikes.
Skubal allowed the tying run in the bottom of the fifth, also his final inning of work, on a sacrifice fly. He gave up six singles (one should’ve been an error on a first base not quite adequately covered), struck out seven, and walked none. He threw 57 of his 68 pitches (83.8%) for strikes.
José Alvarado relieved Wheeler, and he came in chucking a boatload of 101- and 102-mph sinkers from the left side. Good luck with that, fellas!
Brenan Hanifee came in for the sixth and walked a guy, but got Castellanos to ground into a double play to end the inning; he then carried on into the seventh and got a flyout and a pair of groundouts. Beau Brieske followed him and got five groundouts and a flyout in the eighth and ninth, and hey, that’s pretty much what both of them did down the stretch drive for the Tigers, wasn’t it?
So, in the end, nobody won. Nobody lost. We all had some fun, killed a some time, had a few laughs, and we all went away moderately satisfied.
I Heard You Missed Him, He’s Back!
(with apologies to Diamond Dave and the fellas )
Wenceel Pérez saw action in a spring game for the first time in a couple of weeks after some lower-back tightness, and he looked fine. With Parker Meadows out past Opening Day with a nerve issue, he’s going to be expected to see much of the action in centre until Meadows’ return.
Beware the Ides of March
Do you occasionally think about the Roman Empire? (If you’re a dude, apparently you do.)
On this day in 44 BCE, Roman emperor Julius Caesar was assassinated by his buddy Brutus and a host of other knife wielding senators. It left a power vacuum for a while, but that all eventually got sorted out. Shoutout to old Octavian, particularly the version from HBO’s Rome series, which was awesome and all too brief. The assassination was later memorialized in William Shakespeare’s play called, as you may have imagined, Julius Caesar, which I fully admit I have never read. Of course, historians don’t think Caesar ever uttered the words “Et tu Brute?” Taking a bunch of daggers through the lungs tends to take your mind off leaving this world with a memorable quote.